The Freelancers' Show

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 03:45 - Long-Term Contracts 07:14 - Marketing while under contract 10:01 - Working on other projects while working full-time 16:10 - Energy 17:01 - Money Emergency funds 21:41 - Lone developer vs team projects 28:05 - Full-time contract pros and cons Renewing Flexibility Meetings Routine 40:50 - Finding full-time contracts Picks ruby-orgs (Jim) dtao / safe_yaml (Jim) Freebook Sifter (Eric) Discomfort Zone: How to Master the Universe (Eric) Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver of the 10th Doctor (Chuck) Contactually (Chuck) Dropbox App (Chuck) Next Week Outsourcing and Odesk with Jonathan Shank Transcript CHUCK: I'll get ideas from my ideas. There's an idea.  [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 47 of the Ruby Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: We also have Jim Gay. JIM: Hello from Arlington, Virginia's greatest suburb, Washington, DC! CHUCK: Awesome! I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. And real quick, I want to mention this to a few people. I get request from people who listen to all of the shows that I do, so some of you will be interested, some of you won't. That's fine. If you're not interested, I apologize. You can't help by getting the word out, but I'm going to be teaching a Ruby on Rails course starting in March. And I'd love to get people to sign up, if they want to learn Ruby on Rails. I think the approach that I'm taking is a little bit different from what a lot of other people do, and that it's a course over 8 weeks. I encourage you to build an application and then we get it deployed to a server or to Heroku or both and just help you figure it out, help you find what road blocks you're going to run into as you build whatever application it is and kind of get you all the way through the process in 8 weeks. I don't think you can get that from a book, from videos, or from a 2 or 3 day in-person course class. So if you're interested, go to railsrampup.com and sign up! And I just appreciate you listening. If you're not interested, then I would appreciate it if you just tweet that out and let people know that it's available. ERIC: Awesome! Yeah I think that would be great. Like I know a lot of people who come to local meet-up groups and say "Oh, I'm trying to learn" and they spend some time hacking away from reading tutorials and cobbling stuffs together from the internet. But a long course like that could really help people kind of get over the hump and understand. CHUCK: Yeah that's what I found. I've had a few people actually come to me and say "I read this book, (or) I took this class, and now I'm trying to build my app, and I'm running into these issues." And so that's what this is kind of designed to work around. ERIC: Cool! CHUCK: Alright! Well let's get into today's topic. We're going to be talking about full-time clients or full-time projects, I guess. Either way. JIM: Neither projects where you're what?

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:28 - Working From Home Distractions Environment 07:35 - Pros of Working From Home Animals Purr Programming 2.0: Lance Gleason Schedule/Flexibility Naps Deliveries/Home Repairs Commute 11:57 - Focus & Productivity Renting an Office 14:22 - Cons of Working From Home Office Neighbors/Noise Pollution Furnishing an Office Cabin Fever 22:37 - Working in an Office Social Outlet Others’ Opinions 25:31 - Overcoming Distractions Family Comes First Making up Time 29:54 - Staying on Task Shifting your Work Set Hours Pomodoring Setting Boundaries 37:35 - Fixed Number of Hours xkcd: Ballmer Peak Picks Hydrofarm Thirsty Light (Chuck) Powermat Power Dual 1200 Rechargeable Backup Battery (Chuck) PVC Pipe in Plants (Eric) iPad Mini (Evan) Transcript ERIC: Replace Chuck with a recording robot. [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelancing business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 46 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Evan Light. EVAN: Hi! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to be talking about Working Locations. I've had a few people talk to me in the past, when I tell them that I'm a freelancer and that I work from home, they just look at me like "How do you do that? How do you deal with all the distractions? I mean, I'd just go and e-pop corner in front of the TV all day or something”. And so I thought we could talk about the work locations, some of the pros and cons, and how you deal with distractions and things like that. So, I tend to work from. I know that Eric, you usually work from home as well, right? ERIC: Yeah. Like maybe one or two days set up a year, I might not work from home. But I'm here; this is where I'm at. CHUCK: Yeah. And Evan, you used to work from home, didn't you? EVAN: I did until about 2 months ago, and then I rented an office. CHUCK: Alright. Did you just go with like an executive suite type thing or -- EVAN: Well, yeah. I went on craze list. Well I looked around a lot, but ultimately I went on craze list and found a small -- a local realtor who is leasing by the room and just basically got a room that I came equipped with a desk and internet and power and what not. Grabbed my Aeron chair and there it was, and computer was good to go. CHUCK: Yeah that's what they have out here, I don't know if it's just the term out here, but they call them executive suites. Basically, you're renting like a room and then you get access to the conference room when you need it, and the building furnishes power, that kind of stuff. EVAN: I don't think we have a term for it out here because that would imply that we have enough civilization to come up with terms like that. CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah. Adobe built a huge building that's right outbuy where most of those suites are out here. So, I'm kind of curious as to what your experiences been working from home you guys.

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:41 - Employment History 06:58 - Perks of Being a Freelancer Variety of Job Areas Choose Your Work Flexibility & Freedom 15:22 - Paycheck Security Unemployment Contractors Vs Employees 20:54 - Coast-Along Employees 21:50 - Health Benefits 23:34 - Marketing & Selling Providing Value to a Company 27:27 - Business Skills 29:37 - Self-Direction & Motivation 32:48 - Loans 34:51 - Going Back to Work (after freelancing) Picks Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself by Daniel H. Pink (Eric) Powermat Home & Office Mat (Chuck) Une Bobine (Chuck) Transcript ERIC: Hold on, I got to shut my door. My dog opened it and I don't want the cats to come fly in here. [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 45 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: I had tea to drink! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to be talking about the Risks of Freelancing versus Fulltime Development. The general idea is that -- I get a lot of people that we talk to and basically the idea is this that they're like "well, I would go freelance because it looks like you'll get a lot of perks, but I just can't stand the risk". To me it just doesn't feel as risky. So we're going to talk about that; talk about some of the what's and why's and maybe why freelancing is or isn't as risky as being a fulltime employee and some of the other things that related to that. I'm a little curious Eric, what is your kind of your employment history? ERIC: I worked when I was in high school, just normal high school type jobs. Went to college, did some college jobs like delivered pizza, that sort of thing. And then right after college, went to work for a software company and actually got started there in technical support, then went to testing, and then went to software development. So I was like going through and by the end of it, I was doing desktop software development, wasn't in a mobile at the time. I did all the web development, manage all their servers, manage their network, and so I like had my hand in a lot of pies by there. Then after that, we moved and I started my own company. CHUCK: Wow! After college you worked for one company and then went freelance? ERIC: Yeah, pretty much. In college, I'd say freshman year or maybe sophomore year-ish, I got heavy into like reading about entrepreneurship and all that. I've actually started 2 or 3 businesses. I didn't know what I was doing and basically, looking back at it now, it was stupid for me to do those. But I learned enough at that time and figured out that I like running my own business. And so basically most of the jobs that I had were just stop gaps to pay the bills and to learn more and tell I was actually felt confident enough that I could actually run my own company. CHUCK: Yeah that makes sense. So my work history is somewhat similar. I worked in high school, too, I worked at grocery stores as baggers and checkers, and whatever.

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Discussion 01:16 - Keeping Passion for Work Alive Happiness vs Money Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 04:14 - Making it a Craft 08:45 - Client Fit Raising Rates 10:41 - “Safety” and Satisfaction The Ruby Freelancers Show 012 – Getting Starting as a Freelancer 13:41 - Self-Actualization Community Exposure Praise 25:04 - Practice Every Day Mastery by Robert Greene 27:08 - Having Outlets 31:31 - Change & Creating New Habits Balance Tiny Habits w/ Dr. BJ Fogg The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg 38:34 - “Serious Practitioners” Picks Functional Programming for the Object-Oriented Programmer (Jim) Multitenancy with Rails by Ryan Bigg (Jim) Writer’s block and the drip: Seth Godin (Eric) Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment by George Leonard (Evan) Transcript EVAN: Eric, you there? ERIC: I'm chewing... EVAN: I don't believe I've heard that particular voice before...  [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] EVAN: Hello! And welcome to the Ruby Freelancers Podcast! Today, I am hosting -- my name is Evan Light. Normally we have Chuck Wood hosting, and I have here Eric Davis. ERIC: Hi! EVAN: Eric is only somewhat conscious, so we can only ask yes or no questions. ERIC: Yes. EVAN: [laughs] And Jim Gay! JIM: Hello! EVAN: So today we decided we are going to talk about "keeping the passion for the work alive", and the tradeoffs involved in doing work we enjoy versus doing work that pays well. This came from a Skype chat that Jim and I, I guess we're getting into undecide during other Skype chats [inaudible]. And I was explaining that I value doing client work that I enjoy more than earning a buck. And Jim was pushing and pointing that, pushing out pushing back that earning a buck is really gushed or unimportant. JIM: Yeah I think we're both kind of agreeing and disagreeing at the same time. When we were talking earlier before we started recording the show, I was thinking of Maslow's hierarchy of needs which -- if people aren't familiar with that, basically on the lowest level of hierarchy it's like "can you survive?" Are you eating? ERIC: The reap of your head? JIM: Yeah, exactly. That type of thing. And then higher up the scale is like the top self-actualization; being pleased with who you are. And I think as long as you've got enough income coming in that you can pay for your house and feed your family and things like that, then you can start going up the path that's like figuring out "okay do I actually care about the work that I'm doing?" EVAN: But there's also -- Well, yeah, okay so potentially there's (I don't know if this is a matter of potentially -- I really need to complete this sentence though), there's the boundaries where we perceived to those boundaries to be in Maslow's hierarchy. I mean this is something -- Maslow's hierarchy: self to something like consider a lot, but the question of where you perceived those boundaries to be might different from person to person. The physiological,

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:39 - Addressing Team Issues Implementing Change Stand-Up Meetings 04:44 - Stand-Up Meeting Issues 07:37 - Organization Politics Expetise Experience 11:21 - Idea Resistence People Problems Control 18:16 - Problematic Coworkers 20:26 - Team Communication Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Skype Hubot Campfire GoToMeeting Adobe Connect Google+ Hangouts tmux 28:10 - Assigning Tickets & Stories 36:22 - Finding Solutions to Problems You Don’t Understand 38:04 - When Change Doesn’t Happen Satisfaction Level 40:01 - Management Issues/Changes 42:43 - Team Planning Planning Poker Estimations 48:17 - Ideas for Integration Leveraging Experience Picks Poor man’s guide to managing Ruby versions (Jim) Extreme Programming Pocket Guide (Eric) Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz (Chuck) Transcript ERIC: Helloooooooo! [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 43 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: We also have Jim Gay. JIM: I'm back! CHUCK: You are back! We missed you! JIM: Thank you. CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv and I've been working hard on railsrampup.com. So if you wanna learn Ruby on Rails, go check it out! Alright, this week we're going to be talking about -- I don't know what the title of the show would be yet, but we're going to be talking about like improving team, processes, communication, etcetera, etcetera. When you're a freelancer on the team and -- we may go into like what you can do when you're new, what you can do when you've been around and earn some street cred, but let's just jump in and talk about some of the stuff. Just to kick it off, I generally like to just come up with something that's relevant from my experience. I'm working on a team right now, and the things that actually been reasonably good over there. And most of the time if I have a concern, or a thought, or an idea, I can just get away with going to the Director over the project and he'll usually talk through it with me and then implement a change if it's good idea. So, I just kind of wanna throw that out there because sometimes the solution is pretty simple. JIM: Yeah! I've definitely done that; making sure that I'm constantly talking to whoever the project manager is. I don't know, I've kind of looked at conversations like around process and comments and say "You know, I've noticed this and I wonder about changing it to that". Just in terms of thinking like "let's try it!" or maybe "we should try it!". Or if you don't wanna try it, fine. I'm sure there will have other things. But I've never felt like even though sometimes I felt really strongly, we really ought to find a better way to communicate or something like that. I never tried to put my foot down like "look, it must be done this way". And sometimes I feel like I want to be the guy who will do that,

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:18 - Planning For the Year New Media Expo Consumer Electronics Show MountainWest RubyConf Rails Ramp Up 06:57 -...

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 02:33 - Designers Referrals 12:00 - Bookkeepers Accountant recommendations/preference 19:44 - Virtual Assistants ...

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code) Discussion 01:28 - What do you do when prospective clients only want to hire you full-time? Employees vs Contractors On-site work 08:35 - How to get clients from a different country or timezone Enforcing contracts Marketing 13:49 - Do people hire you because you’re specifically a “Ruby” freelancer? 21:02 - What types of jobs do you accept and what types do you refuse? Will the project be successful? 30:35 - What types of jobs are you getting from Ruby on Rails? 33:35 - How do you deal with uncertainty or risk when writing a Statement of work? Identify risky areas Be as specific as possible 39:25 - Building LinkedIn recommendations Testemonials 43:32 - Working on a retainer Support Agreements/On Call work Picks Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB Cardioid Dynamic USB/XLR Microphone (Eric) Nexus 7 (Evan) SCOTTEVEST Fleece 7.0 Jacket (Evan) Twitter Bootstrap (Chuck) Downton Abbey (Chuck) Rails Ramp Up (Chuck) Transcript CHUCK: Yes, I put my microphone right on my face. So you get all of the good noises that come out of my mouth. [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 40 of the Ruby Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: We also have Evan Light. EVAN: Hello CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to kind of work through some of the questions that have been put on our user voice panel. There are a handful of them that we don't think necessarily merit a full show. Meaning that, we don't know if we could talk about them for a full hour so we'll just ask some of the questions and then work our way through them. So the first question that I see that I want to go over is "what do you do when prospects only want you as a full time employee?" And there's a bit more to this, Bryan Ray put it up and it says "I'm pretty new to freelancing. I moonlight in pretty much all of my prospects in the past couple of months, seemed interested after a couple of conversations, but eventually they are only looking for full time employees right now. Either full time or 30-40 hours a contract work, which at that point you're basically an employee working for one client's stricter hours indefinite work as opposed to distinct projects, etc. I'm pretty sure it's due to the fact that I can't dedicate many hours per week right now. Do you guys run into this problem? Or did you when you first started out?" EVAN: For me, I tend to work for one big client to one smaller client at a time so I'm not quite fulltime with a client, but I tend to dedicate a lot of time to one client, but not fulltime. And I've gotten some people who want me to work fulltime and I generally try to avoid those period. If they said that's what they want, usually they're inflexible on it, then I just move on find someone else. At least that's been my experience. ERIC: It's been a bit different. I did, I think it was 2 up to maybe 4 or 5 clients at a time for a while there.

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code) Discussion 01:47 - Static sites vs Wordpress Jekyll 03:33 - Important parts of a Website Placeholder sites Contact information 04:27 - Getting contacted Wufoo 07:43 - Blog Posts theAdmin.org 08:45 - Portfolios Eric’s Portfolio Landing Pages 11:05 - Testimonials 11:55 - Mailing Lists/Newsletters Trustbuilding Waiting list of clients 14:13 - Landing Pages Small pages Guide people to their goal 16:33 - Social Media 17:22 - Logos LogoWorks 19:22 - Static Site Generators 21:07 - What do you want people to do when they visit your site? Welcome Gate: LeadBrite Contact Me littlestreamsoftware.com (Eric) intentionalexcellence.net (Chuck) 23:40 - Products/eBooks 25:49 - Landing Pages Headline Subheadline Call to action 29:23 - A/B Testing for Wordpress Optimizely 30:33 - Analytics 31:23 - About Pages Use “I” not “We” 34:07 - SEO 36:35 - Project Inclusion in Portfolios Picks Arkon Portable Fold-Up Stand (Eric) Oversized Low-Profile Creeper (Chuck) Floor Jack With Rapid Pump (2.5 Ton) (Chuck) Transcript [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 39 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to be talking about "What Should Be On My Website". And this was kind of my idea as far as something that I wanted to do mainly because I've been playing with the idea of putting together a website for my freelancing business. It's kind of shocking, I think. To think that I've been doing this for two and a half years and still don't have a really functional website for my business. But at the same time, I mean I have some ideas of things that I think should be on there, and I know Eric has been doing this for a while and has a website that does bring him business. So I thought we could just jump in and talk about some of the things that we think should be there or some of the things that people put on there that maybe they "un" put on there or maybe don't give them as much of a win as they think it gives them. So Eric, I'm a little curious before we start talking about what's on the website, is your website built on like WordPress or anything? Or is it something you built on Rails? ERIC: Yeah so right now I was just using WordPress. Let's say I started with a static site, built a custom Ruby, or actually Rails CMS, scrapped to because I'd rather work on client projects or paid projects than to maintain my own CMS system. And I jumped around to just different stack side generators, but I ended up going back to WordPress just because it worked, it's functional, and I can get basically all the features I needed without having to tip-down and write code and maintain all the code for it. So yeah right now, it's for now on WordPress and I got a custom VPS built for it. So it's all of my sites are actually hosted on a private server, it's not like a shared host or anything. CHUCK: Yeah that makes sense.

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:11 - Optimizing your sales and marketing pipeline Lead generation (marketing) Lead conversion Project delivery 08:54 - Follow ups 11:24 - Lead categories Want to work right now Trying to decide Decide against you 12:26 - Closing a client (sales) Not just going for wallets Leads who take advantage/getting something for nothing “Velvet Roping” Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port 15:57 - Client fit Qualifying 17:36 - Marketing Mailing lists Open-source contribution Being active in communities 19:31 - Referrals Where do they come from? 22:05 - Recruiters Responding to recruiters Dealing with recruiters 28:01 - Website traffic analyzation Google Analytics 31:41 - Newsletters Listening vs reading Getting newsletter subscribers MailChimp AWeber Autoresponders 47:09 - What should I do? Where do you want people to wind up? Make it easy for people to contact you/get them where you want them to go Landing pages Comments on blogs 53:31 - Your personal ideal pipeline Picks BrowserStack (Eric) PipelineDeals (Eric) Sad Trombone (Jim) GetClicky (Chuck) AWeber (Chuck) Omnifocus (Chuck) POP App (Jim) Transcript EVAN: If someone takes a poker and makes it really hot and shoves it in your behind, that would be a branding problem. [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 38 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: That's me. CHUCK: Evan Light. EVAN: I wasn’t ready! CHUCK: Jim Gay. JIM: Hello from a standing desk. CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about Optimizing Your Sales and Marketing Pipeline. Sounds like a mouthful. So do we want to start with a definition? What is the-- JIM: Is this Ruby Rogues? Did we dial in the wrong place? CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah I kind of felt like-- [laughter] ERIC: Yeah, I would like a definition. CHUCK: Well, my understanding (and you guys can and probably will correct me) that the sales pipeline or marketing pipeline is effectively the process that you put your prospects through basically from the moment that they encounter your website or market message all the way up until you convert them to a sale or to a client. Is that oversimplified or did I miss something? EVAN: I would say “leads” not “prospects”. CHUCK: Leads? EVAN: Yeah. ERIC: Yeah. It basically starts at leads. Like you know, this person might have come to your site like an anonymous visitor or maybe they heard of you or something that was like, “Oh, who’s Chuck?” and that's kind of where they start that. And then it goes to… what is it… suspects? No, actually suspect is fair. Suspects are people that might be a good candidate for your business. Then its leads when they actually kind of contact you… there's also prospects. It’s hard.

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Dicussion 02:50 - Overcoming Isolation Working from coffeehouses Lunch dates 06:25 - Recruiting others with similar interests 07:40 - Talk on Twitter 07:46 - Evan’s Apprentice 09:46 - Pairing Remote vs Physical 11:19 - Personality Types 12:13 - Coworking Spaces Creative Work Busy Work 14:51 - Walking and Driving 15:33 - Meetups and User Groups 17:53 - Commiserating and Ranting 19:08 - Attending Conferences 23:26 - Working Onsite for Clients Picks Strong VPN (Eric) Cloak (Evan) OS X Server (Evan) The Ruby Object Model and Metaprogramming by Dave Thomas (Chuck) New Media Expo 2013 (Discount code Wood20) (Chuck) Transcript EVAN: What's the background noise that... Is there any? CHUCK: I hear people talking. It’s OK. EVAN: OK. Why can’t I crank my volume up louder than this? What the hell? Oh, well that might be why. Now say something. CHUCK: Something. EVAN: Good! You did exactly what you were told to do. Thank you. ERIC: Right. EVAN: Right. Actually that should have been my response, “Right!” CHUCK: So what we are talking about… last week we were talking about-- EVAN: [inaudible] CHUCK: Right. EVAN: Right. Talking about “right”? CHUCK: We were thinking about… talking about— EVAN: [laughs] We were thinking about talking about— CHUCK: OK! ERIC: I think Chuck is stuck on a loop. [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing: Developer Edition - Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 37 of The Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Evan Light. EVAN: I love my brown pants. CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about Combating Isolation and Loneliness -- since we work from home and stuff. So I have to say, I'm a little bit punch-drunk because I've been pulling insane hours for my client. EVAN: So you are rich now? CHUCK: Uhh… EVAN: [inaudible] Oops, we can leave the singing out of the transcript please. Thank you. CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah not yet. They haven’t paid me for all my work I guess. ERIC: --- on paper. EVAN: The only one who is punch-drunk today. CHUCK: Wow. EVAN: Real drunk might be better. CHUCK: Real drunk? EVAN: --- actually be topical. Oh wait -- sorry, folks this is what happens to you when you have too much isolation. CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah. So, any who, so we all work from home -- mostly generally. EVAN: And coffeehouses. CHUCK: Right. EVAN: Right. CHUCK: So, what do you do to combat that? How do you overcome the working in a room by yourself all day-- EVAN: I thought you were going to say “overcompensate” instead of overcome because somehow that seems more appropriate right now. [laughter] Second, you record a lot of podcasts like Chuck. I had to get that one out there. Third, you start recording more podcasts like me. [chuckles] OK. Seriously, so you go out to a coffeehouse which is where I am -- which is why if you hear background noise, well,

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 02:02 - Picking topics Passion Frustration Driven Development: Evan’s WindyCityRails Talk 2012 Listener questions/interest Lynchpin by Seth Godin “Doing what you love and sharing with other people” 07:08 - Speaking at User Groups vs Conferences Practice runs Keydown 09:46 - Twitter inquiries 10:16 - Topic proposals Marketing Abstracts 13:28 - Marketing to conference owners/marketing to the audience Making memorable talks 16:32 - How speakers are chosen Individual merit/”Hero Worship” Keynotes by invitation Past experience 20:56 - Preparing for a talk Practice Keynote / Keydown 25:04 - Writing a book/writing a presentation Flexibility Stream of consciousness writing Markdown Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds 31:37 - Code in slides Syntax highlighting Wrapping lines Screen resolution Geekfest 35:18 - Practice, practice, practice Time your presentation Possibly leave time for Q&A Skipping slides Real-time edits 39:29 - Talking about something/convincing people to try something Avoid library talks Try to get people to shift perspectives 41:56 - Don’t change topics at the last minute 45:58 - Communication between conference organizers 49:32 - Giving talks, getting leads and referrals, and being recognized as “an expert” Picks Pilot G2 Retractable Gel Ink Color Rolling Ball Pens (Eric) Keydown (Evan) Kensington 33374 Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer (Chuck) QR codes (Chuck) Transcript EVAN: Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. [sniffs] [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing: Developer Edition: Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 36 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: We also have Evan Light. EVAN: I'm back! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. And this week we are going to be talking about “Preparing for and Speaking at Conferences”. EVAN: Conferences. CHUCK: And I'm kind of inclined to also talk about speaking at users groups. EVAN: Yeah you should. We should. Actually we should let you do all the talking about users groups. CHUCK: Why is that? EVAN: Because I just said ‘you’ first instead of ‘we’. CHUCK: [laughs] What did I do to you? EVAN: [chuckles] Right. CHUCK: So let’s start talking. So Evan, I think you spoken at more conferences than either Eric or I have. EVAN: Or just spoken more, as in ‘talk a lot’. Yeah, especially I’ve done quite a bit this year too. So I remember in the user voice, the person who suggested this topic started with “How do you pick your topics”, and I think it’s pretty much how do you pick your topics and how do you present and how you get accepted. Picking my topics for me is one of two things -- or actually no, it was really one thing – at the end of it, it’s always, it’s something important to me that I wanna share. That I feel strongly about and I wanna share.

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:36 - Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch (Eric) 04:51 - Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen (Chuck) David Allen Company Podcast 06:30 - Time Management for System Administrators by Tom Limoncelli (Eric) 08:47 - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey (Chuck) 12:26 - Get Clients Now!: A 28-Day Marketing Program for Professionals, Consultants, and Coaches by C.J. Hayden (Eric) 15:08 - Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling by Michael Port (Eric) 17:09 - 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal by Dan Miller (Chuck) 48 Days Podcast 20:10 - The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. (Eric) Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco (Eric) 24:11 - Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Rober T. Kiyosaki (Chuck) 26:29 - Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss (Eric) 28:50 - The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development by Chad Fowler(Chuck) 32:18 - Dead Tree Books vs eBooks Tactile feel Convenience Note-taking 39:20 - Managing to-dos Phone apps & email Highlighting Quotes folder Tweets 40:35 - Skipping/Skimming parts of books Book samples 42:57 - Finishing books Reading multiple books at once Reading more than one genre at once 45:09 - Books as mediums for learning 46:52 - Reviewing books Picks Developer depression: Isolation is the biggest problem by Lauren Maffeo (Eric) RubyTapas Episode 4: Barewords (Eric) HandBrake (Chuck) BitTorrent (Chuck) Transmission (Chuck) Transcript [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing: Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made it by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 35 of the Ruby Freelancer show. This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello. CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv and this week, we are going to be talking about… we were looking at like the top five books that we recommend, and I think we are just going to kind of add and just recommend our top books. It’s hard for me to make a list of top five and it sounded like Eric had like, four that he’d recommend outright and then it was a tie between another four or five. We’ll just kinda see how it goes. Eric, what is your top book? I'm kind of curious to hear about that. ERIC: And by “top” you mean top of the pile of books that's sitting on my desk? CHUCK: Yeah, the one that you would recommend the most, I guess. ERIC: OK. So I think the one that’s had the best impact was I think “Duct Tape Marketing” by John Jantsch. It’s very much a marketing oriented book, but it has a lot of good like how to run your business and it’s just not just marketing but sales and customers and who you are working for and kind of like what services you are providing. And it’s kind of an older book. I have used it for many,

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:58 - Brownfield Projects Contrast to Greenfield Legacy Code 06:50 - Labeling and defining a Brownfield Project Age Decrepitude 08:37 - How to handle Brownfield Projects Upgrading Modernizing Tree (Unix) The First Step of Refactoring a Rails Application Socratic Method 15:48 - Rescue Project versus Brownfield Project State of the Client versus State of the Project Urgent Need 20:02 - Technical Problems     Business Leadership Problems Conway’s Law Working Effectively with Legacy Code: Michael Feathers 26:56 - Refactoring and Testing Show, Don’t Tell (Leading by example) Redesigning Agile: Part II - Introducing Intridea Forge 31:46 - Educating team members Correcting mistakes Learn how others work Lead by example 36:57 - Pushback Trying new angles Leave the project Lower standards Picks Rails Commit (Eric) Practical KnockoutJS (Eric) The Delighted Developer (Evan) Dead Man’s Snitch (Jim) TweetBot (Chuck) Therapeutic Refactoring: Katrina Owen (Chuck) 069 Ruby Rogues: Therapeutic Refactoring with Katrina Owen (Chuck) Transcript JIM: Brownfield's project, I’m just thinking, reminds me of this joke I heard where there's like a cabin boy on a pirate ship and the captain is always telling, when they are going in to battle, captain turns and say, “Arrr! Get me my red shirt!” And so, you know, they’d go to a battle and every time they go, “Arrr! Get me my red shirt!” And so, finally, the cabin boy goes to the captain and captain says, “Sir, why are you always telling to ‘get me a red shirt’?” “Well, I don’t want the men to see me bleed if I get stabbed.” And so, the next time they were travelling through the entire like Spanish Armada comes out and just completely surrounds them. And the captain turns to the cabin boy and says, “Arrr! Get me my brown pants!” [laughter] [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing: Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made it by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 34 of the Ruby Freelancers Show. This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello. CHUCK: We have Evan light. EVAN: Today, I have whiskey. CHUCK: And we also have Jim Gay. JIM: I am ready to go. CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv and this week, we are going to be talking about Brownfield Projects. And who says it’s such-- EVAN: It doesn’t sound very pleasant, right? CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah. There was some discussion before the show about that. JIM: That term is terrible. I mean-- EVAN: It’s poopy. CHUCK: Oh geez. [laughs] Somebody has to say it, right? JIM: Actually before we start talking, I started searching like is there a Wikipedia entry for brownfield? Like, who came up with the term “brownfield”? EVAN: Well, we can get it in the Urban Dictionary pretty fast. [laughs] CHUCK: Oh geez. [laughs] I usually hear it as a contrast to “greenfield” is what I hear. JIM: Yeah, I’d certainly understand that. I always like I mentioned before,

Panel Evan Light (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Discussion 01:30 - Dealing with unrealistic expectations 03:13 - “The Iron Triangle” Cost Performance Schedule 04:02 - Bad management 05:07 - Establishing expectations Prioritizing Schedule & Budget 08:08 - Rescue Clients & Projects 11:34 - Developers are not interchangeable 12:03 - Approaching a project 13:55 - Business owner and end user communication 16:58 - Client Communication Trade-offs Hired guns 21:47 - Amateurs vs Professionals 24:04 - Managing communication expectations 28:57 - Engagement & Evaluation of process 34:24 - Wrapping up a project 38:36 - Types of projects Clearly defined outcomes Ongoing 42:23 - Client domains 47:33 - Influencing clients and teams towards better practices 50:30 - Clients that don’t want your input Picks Kalzumeus Blog (Eric) gfxCardStatus (Jim) The New CTO: Uncle Bob (Jim) Verizon LTE (Evan) Kalzumeus Podcast 3: Growing Consulting Practices, with Brennan Dunn (Jeff) IBM 168 | Earning Passive Income with Software, an Interview with Dane Maxwell (Jeff) Anvil for Mac (Jeff) Transcript  JIM: Are we the optimal people to talk about this? EVAN: Oh, god. How long are we going to spend figuring this out? [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing: Developer Edition” Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made it by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] EVAN: Hi and welcome to the Ruby Freelancer podcast. I'm your temporary host in lieu of Chuck not being here. This is Evan light and today, I got here Eric Davis. ERIC: Hey! EVAN: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up. EVAN: Jim Gay. [silence] Jim Gay? JIM: Yeah, I'm here. EVAN: OK. Cool. JIM: Thank you. That mute button is not working like I thought. EVAN: (laughs) Nice. And that is already in the recording. And today we are going to talk about Managing Client Expectations. So, who wants to get started? JIM: the first thing that comes to me with managing client expectations is an experience I had on a project where, we were in crunch mode right in the start of the project. It was a rescue project and it was terrible code and the project manager was agreeing to his superiors that we would get x,y and z launched by a certain and who would come and tell us the date. And that's always a recipe for disaster. And we have a new developer come on to the project. He had been there like, I think he came on Friday and we had to do work for the weekend. So he, like his first start on the project was over the weekend, Monday morning. We missed the deadline of course because things weren’t working right. And the project manager came in; we were doing our stand up meeting Monday morning and the first thing out of his mouth was, “You guys are killing me.” And it totally killed our morale. So right from the get go, we all have to put everything together and figure out, like, “Oh, how are we going to work on this person who clearly has a misunderstanding of what can be done on the project or with the development team.” So that was the challenge right from the get go for me. EVAN: In my experience,